A lesson in morality
A lesson in faith
A lesson in justice
A lesson in truth

And just a little – common sense

Lifting child – a lesson in acceptable vs. unacceptable risk and a basic lesson in morality. 
Do you remember when we were kids, playing that game where we would pick up a smaller child by the head, while they were holding on to our hands or arms?  I’ve seen it done by adults even today (while I hold my breath).  Well in my 7 or 8-year young scientific mind, I rationalized that the body of a smaller child shouldn’t be too heavy to be lifted – without their holding on, IF they tightened up their neck muscles sufficiently.  Unfortunately when we tried it, my little cousin let out a blood curdling scream that meant  little less than my getting in a whole lot of trouble.  You see, it was an unacceptable risk according to the adults, because IF it didn’t work, well, we just may not have that favorite cousin or her wonderful child or their beautiful grandkids here today.  Praise the Lord for that scream!  Your see it was a morally unacceptable experiment.  And I certainly learned something that day about morals.  When it comes to life and death, death is not morally acceptable when it’s caused by another person.

So I wonder – when did that moral law cease to exist?  When did we decide we had the power to redefine what life is, so that we could override that law and make killing acceptable, be it of the elderly, the incarcerated, the poor, the incapacitated or even children in the womb?  Now, my kids may think that I was an overly protective parent.  But, by not allowing guns to be played with as toys, or by controlling what they watched on TV, I think they grew up as adults having a much better respect for what is right and wrong in a moral sense.  No, we’re not all perfect, leastwise me, but we know that there are rules and that most rules are made to help, save or protect us.

And in following those rules – we truly are “set free!”

Finger in socket – a lesson in faith.
My dad was, by profession, a tool and die maker.  He was very good with his hands.  And he was also quite good with electricity.  He built TVs and radios and was a ham radio operator.  He invented mechanical gadgets, raised parakeets and us kids too, and he  eventually even owned a grocery store (another story).  I remember when I was 8 or 9-years old, helping my dad put up Christmas lights in the store, and his insisting that I not put my finger in the light socket while we tested the light bulbs.  Never say “don’t” to a kid.  You kkknnoow it’s not eeeeasy hiding the frizzed out hair or the still shaking elbows from a jolt with ‘Public Service’.

Sometimes when someone more experienced than us tells us something – it’s really for our own good to Listen, to have Faith that they know what they’re talking about.

Funny, we’ve been told for thousands of years what’s good and not good for us.  We’ve seen example after example of what happens when we don’t listen.  It’s all written in a very old book called the Bible.  So I wonder – when did listening and faith cease to exist?  When did we decide we had to reinvent the wheel and shove that square thing down people’s throats when a round one worked so much better?  Why are we still using oil when alternatives have been available for decades?  Why is our government deciding that they need to get into the business of religion so that they can change the moral codes of life?  There is clearly something amiss going on ’round here and if we’re not careful, we’ll just be another nasty statistic, like the seventy-eight million Chinese, the six-million Jews, the eight-hundred thousand Rwandans or the hundred thousand Bosnians killed in genocides within the last century.  You see if we want to keep the Freedom that our forefathers and even our children are fighting for, we need to make sure our own backyards are not being absconded while we sit on our comfortable indifference!

We really do have something absolutely terrific here, Freedom.
Let’s not lose it!

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Parent asking child to pick candy – a lesson in justice and injustice.
So we moved to the backside apartment of a grocery store when I was 7-years old.  And after graduating from bottle-boy to icebox-water-dumper to shelf stocker, I was finally allowed to serve the candy counter.  It was a true lesson in patience!  Giving a kid a couple cents and asking him to choose from hundreds of candies is nerve racking to say the least.  And yet it was also a lot of fun to serve those kids.  But then, put a parent in with them, and there was no better way to dump ice water on an euphoric scene.
Dad – “What kind of candy would you like, Junior?”  Junior – “hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm,  um – I want THAT one!”
Dad – “Nah, you don’t want that one.  What about this one?!!”  Junior – “No, I don’t want that.  How ah-bout THIS one?”
Dad – “Nah, you don’t want that either.  I think you really want this one!!”
Junior – “NOOOOOOO!”  Dad – “Give im this one!”   Junior – “WAAAAAAAA!!!”  I always felt like slapping that Dad across the face.  Why did he ask Junior in the first place, when he was going to make the decision himself, anyway?  Sound familiar?!!

As we grew up, we learned about this thing called inflation.  Inflation means that every year – then every month – then every week – then day by day, someone is going to raise the cost of every blasted thing we need to live on.  From the clothes we wear, to the food we eat, to the gas we need to drive (to that job to make the money to live on).  And our good old companies would year after year give us this thing called a “cost of living” raise as their offering to help us keep our heads above water with respect to inflation.  And then, well, their expenses were getting too high to give us those any more, so we got phoney stocks instead of raises.  And of course, the stocks weren’t worth very much themselves, because of inflation.  And when there was no more money for even those kinds of raises, they’d say “you must have been a poor performer,” regardless of the awards, patents and kudos you got from your customers all year!!!  And it didn’t quite matter that we were spending 60 or more hours a week to do their work, to keep their heads above water.  And year after year, with inflation increasing and salaries decreasing, we found ourselves becoming more and more – “BROKE”.   And then, well, they discovered that they can get it done much cheaper in China or Singapore, so they gave us pink slips instead.  We didn’t really want to eat anyway, did we???  What kind of candy do you want Junior?  Nah, take this one!  Justice?!

Now all of this is not to say that we were not grateful for those jobs, no matter how much or how little we were paid, we were grateful.  We did our best to work under the contracts we signed when we entered into agreement for that work.  And we always had the right, the freedom, to move or to find another job.  But if we were brought up under the tradition of “job loyalty” (and I know, that’s ‘old school’ now), then it was just a little tough when we discovered that our employers were working under a totally different philosophy called “cash loyalty”, greed!  Regardless of what the cost was to the employees, to product quality, or even to customer service, that good ‘ole bottom line always came first (the old ‘cut off your nose to spite your face’ philosophy).  It never seemed to make any common sense to me!  But who am I?  Guess we’ll just have to get used to those square wheels anyway – someone must like them!!!???

Justice!

What God?  A lesson in truth.
The dollar bill, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Constitution, all those engraved buildings in DC.  Do they actually think they can erase God?  Remember that multi-millennia old book called the Bible?  People have tried to erase God for thousands of years.  IT JUST DOESN’T WORK!  Example after example: the Egyptians, the Israelites, the Roman Emperors, the communists, the Nazis, they all failed.  Are we going to let some radical extremists stick our fingers in that live socket too?   The truth is – OBVIOUS!

So, who’s steering this boat anyway?

Common Sense or Nonsense?
If we stick our finger in a hot light socket, we’ll get shocked.  If we destroy a fetus – it’s murder, because a fetus is a person.  If we go out into the rain without an umbrella or raincoat, we’ll get wet.  If we engage in intercourse, there’s a good likelihood pregnancy will result.  If one person forces their own decision on someone else, that someone else most likely will not be very pleased.  If we constantly fill our minds with sex and murder, drug abuse and cursing – from the TV, movies and books we read – eventually all those activities will become acceptable to us – though the moral laws actually never changed!
If we think we can change the moral laws by erasing God so that we will have that precious “Freedom” (the freedom of death) – it surely will be death that we WILL receive.

Funny – I prefer LIFE!
As for me and my house, that Life is named Jesus, whom we serve!

And in that servitude – there is TRUE freedom; the freedom of LIFE.
It’s a freedom of being guiltless in what we’ve done, being helpful in all we do,
and being HOPE-filled in our view of the future.

It gives our lives true meaning and purpose.
It’s the freedom of knowing that this material life, in which we now live,
is just a prelude to something much much better.
So incredibly awesome, as a matter of fact,
that our wildest imaginations can’t even come close to describing it.

And it’s all centered on our FAITH in Jesus Christ.
A faith that lifts us in tough times.
A faith that lightens the stress.
A faith that allows us to see the joy
in a child’s face, or in a sunset, or in a rainbow, or even in a mole hill.

So who is He and why does it matter?
Come and explore, learn and LIVE!

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